Chapter Eight

Orina looked down at the jade frog that she held in her lap. She sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, facing the headboard, where she didn't have to see her crying face in the mirror or know what time it was. The first was ugly to see and a reminder of her tremendous pain at Decamerone's death; the second made her miss Elgin, which made the voice return. It was boring to sit and think of nothing, but it was worse being alone with her thoughts.

She sighed as she brushed the frog against her lips. Her eyes felt raw and she was sure they were just as red and puffy as her nose. She'd started crying the moment she entered the house; the sort of sobbing that was less tears and more just animal sounds of pain. And she hated the mix of grief and guilt that sluiced through her veins and suffused her body.

Orina set the frog down on the bed in front of her, then rested her elbows on her knees to cradle her head in her hands. She sighed again when she felt the baby stir. It was still too small and its movements too tiny to be felt by anyone but her -- and had been even smaller when its father died -- but she almost dreaded the coming months when it would become undeniably larger. She dreaded the looks and the questions, and she told herself that the charade she was playing with Elgin really was for the best.

She moved one of her hands from her brow to rub her stomach. I do want you, you know that, she told the baby. I don't regret you at all -- I just wish your father could share this with me, and I regret that he's not here with us. I love you. I really want to meet you when you're ready. You're everything I have left.

Orina's heart leapt -- and was immediately struck by a pang of guilt -- when she thought she heard the front door open and it continued to beat faster than it should have when she heard the same door close and lock.

"Orina?" Elgin called from the living room. He sounded somewhat out of breath and very worried.

"I'm in here!" Orina called back, wincing at how her voice cracked and shook. "Hey," she managed, moments later, when the bedroom door opened.

"Oh, Orina..." Elgin sighed. He walked in and, for a second, Orina thought he was going to sit down next to her. He hung the suitcoat he had draped over his arm on the bedpost, then stood awkwardly by the bed. His sleeves were rolled up and she suspected he'd run at least part of the way home. "How are you feeling?"

Orina shrugged.

"I, uh, talked to Mr. Clifton."

"And?"

"He didn't believe me. He said he did, but... he winked when he said it." Elgin coughed. "In fact, I may have made things worse."

"Thanks for trying, at least," Orina said with another shrug.

Elgin nodded. "I really did want to get here sooner... I just had that talk with Mr. Clifton and then Patience stopped me after class. She wanted me to give you this."

Orina looked at the tightly folded piece of paper that Elgin set on the bed. Her name was written on the front of it and it didn't look like the handiwork of any of the little kids.

"I told the afternoon class that you weren't feeling well," Elgin continued. "Some of them wanted to know why you weren't there and... er, some were nicer about it than others. I guess Patience was worried she was the reason why you didn't show up."

"Wait, which one's Patience?" Orina frowned. She wasn't as familiar with the names of the older students -- except for Jade -- but she was sure she hadn't heard that name mentioned in either of the lessons she'd attended.

"You met her -- she's the one you talked to at the beginning of class yesterday."

"Oh. Yeah, I remember her now," Orina said. "What'd you tell her?"

"Just that you really weren't feeling well," Elgin said. "She insisted I give you that note, though. She also made me promise not to open it, so I can't tell you what's inside."

Orina picked up the paper and unfolded it. It contained a short letter of apology written in loopy cursive and ended with the following words: PS: I hope Teacher keeps showing you off. "She says she's sorry," Orina said to Elgin -- who'd taken his glasses off at the start of the unfolding process -- as she folded the paper back up. She set it back down on her other side, away from him.

Elgin put his glasses back on. "Patience has always been a good kid. She just wants to fit in with the others... and, well, you know what that means. I try not to take anything she says in class to heart."

"I won't either, then."

Elgin nodded again. He sat down on the edge of the bed when Orina patted it, then slipped off his shoes so that he could sit cross-legged next to her. His hands rested on his knees and Orina thought she could see his fingers tremble. She looked away, down at the jade frog in front of her.

Orina picked up the frog and held it in the cupped palm of one hand, idly spinning it about with the fingers of the other. "It's a lucky frog," she said to Elgin, before he could ask. "Decamerone gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday and I've carried it everywhere ever since."

"It must be very precious to you, then," he replied. "How does it work?"

"I kiss it," Orina said quietly. "Like the princess in the fairy tale. And it brings me luck." She handed it to Elgin, who handed it back to her.

"I'm afraid it won't work for me," Elgin said, then pointed to his beak.

"Well... wish for something, then," Orina said. She looked at him, eyebrows raised, and waited until he nodded before she brushed her lips against the frog. "There."

"Thank you," he said softly.

"And you can't tell me what you wished for until after it comes true, or else the magic won't work," she told him. She closed her hands over the frog with a sigh. "I know it's not actually magic," she added in a whisper. "I'm not crazy. But it brought me Decamerone and --"

Elgin put one hand over hers. "Orina?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you tell me about Decamerone, please?"

Orina took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Please, Orina," he continued, gently rubbing his thumb across her hand in a slow arc. Orina felt the clawtip of his thumbnail touch her skin and realized that it was actually very blunt. "I told you about Izzy."

Orina nodded, eyes wet. "Okay," she said. "I'll tell you about Decamerone, and I guess I'll have to tell you the rest of what happened before we met, too."

"You don't have to do anything you --" Elgin began, but Orina stopped him.

"I want to. I'm ready, I think," Orina sighed. She looked down at their hands. Her heart thudded in her chest and the voice reminded her of just how intimate this all felt, just her and Elgin alone on the bed.

Elgin nodded, then withdrew his hand and put it back on his knee.

Orina took another deep breath. "I met him when I was fourteen," she began and, to her amazement, the entire story flowed from there. There were times she had to stop and cry, and others when she was so choked with tears that she wasn't entirely sure if Elgin understood her, but she was able to tell him everything.

It took a long time to tell, so much that it flowed from their seat on the bed to the kitchen, where Orina sat at the table and talked while Elgin prepared dinner, and, after dinner, it moved into the living room. And, when it ended, Orina wasn't sure if she liked the silence that followed.

"Let me make you some tea," Elgin finally said as he stood up from the sofa. "I think I've got some honey in the cupboard... I think. Would you like it with milk, otherwise? Mom used to fix that for me whenever I was feeling bad. Oh, and some toast. There's some strawberry jam --"

Orina's stomach gurgled. She rolled her eyes and Elgin chuckled.

"I think we know the baby's vote," he said. "I'll make whatever you want, though."

"I want you to say something about what I just told you," Orina answered. Her stomach gurgled again. "Then I'll have tea with milk and toast with honey."

"Certainly," Elgin said, then started towards the kitchen. He stopped when Orina cleared her throat. "Truthfully, I'm a little alarmed that I'm sharing my home with a fugitive." He dodged the throwpillow that Orina flung at him.

"You jerk!" Orina winced as her voice cracked. "I was worried!" She settled back on the couch with her arms folded and a childish pout.

"It has been over fourteen-thousand years, though, and Zeal no longer exists... I guess it wouldn't do any good to get the phone and call the police," he continued. Orina glared at the entryway; while she had no idea what a phone was, she figured it had to be some sort of relay system. "Seriously, though, your story was amazing... I was right when I said what I had with Izzy was nothing like the love that you and Decamerone shared."

Orina frowned. "It's not a contest," she said quietly.

"No, but... Why was your relationship forbidden?" Elgin asked. "What did Decamerone do that made the court decide he was unworthy of love?"

"Exist."

"What?"

"Decamerone would've been banished with his father, back when all the other demons were banished and summoning was made a forbidden spell... but he was just a little kid. His mother couldn't go with them, either, and she argued that he was a Zealian citizen by birth. He was allowed to stay, but... not as a part of the court or society or anything. The court didn't want any more demons running around, so he was made forbidden, too." Orina took a deep, shaky breath. "I wasn't the first one to break the rules and risk being sent to Algetty, but... he thought he was sterile and his past girlfriends --" She felt a blush creep up into her cheeks and looked guiltily towards the kitchen. "-- they'd treat him like a fling, and leave him when he couldn't give them the family they wanted."

"Ah."

Orina winced inwardly. "I'm sorry, Elgin --"

"We're talking about Decamerone," he said tightly. "Please, continue."

"I just wanted him... I just loved him, so I didn't care. He was enough. I wanted to spend forever with him and nothing else mattered. We'd figure everything out together." Orina placed her hands on her stomach. "I never thought I'd be a mother, since I always loved him... but I guess I figured that he and I could adopt if we wanted kids. We'd be living in Algetty, then, too. Life was hard there and children needed homes."

The teakettle whistled and the toaster sprang up. "Perfect timing!" Elgin announced, a strained quality in his voice that made Orina hold back a sigh.

"Thank you," she said when he walked in and handed her the plate with toast and her mug of tea. They both looked down at her stomach when she took her first bite of toast. "I think the baby's sulking."

"It knows it'll rule the house soon enough," Elgin said on his way back to the kitchen. He returned with a similar mug and plate, except his toast was made with jam. He sat down next to her on the couch. "Calling the baby an 'it' feels wrong, though... what do you think you're having?"

Orina thought about that as she chewed her toast, then took a sip of tea. It tasted comforting, though it wasn't anything she remembered from her own childhood. "I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out when the baby arrives."

Elgin nodded.

"I wish Decamerone could've met you," Orina said, after a while.

"He sounds like quite a person."

"He was," she agreed. "I think you two would get along."

"Perhaps." Elgin stood up and walked over to take her empty mug from off the side table. Orina stopped him before he could pick up her plate as well.

"Wait!" she said. She ran her thumb over the plate to collect the last bit of honey that had ran off the toast, then licked it. "There." She handed the plate to Elgin, who chuckled.

"I'll have to remember to buy more of that, next time we go shopping," he said. He collected his plate and mug as well and put those in the kitchen sink before returning. "There's a farmer's market in Medina every Sunday -- I was actually on my way home from that when I heard the commotion about you. So, I ran home to drop off my bags and then hurried back to see what all the fuss was about. I know I should have gone directly there, but..."

"You still found me and I'm still safe," Orina said with a smile. "You did the right thing. After all, I was hungry."

"That you were," Elgin agreed. "Still, I have to hope that someone would've helped you eventually if I'd just gone home and gone on with the rest of my day. Maybe they would have taken you to Mayor Parnel's house -- she and her family are sympathetic to humans -- or else somebody might've dropped you off at my doorstep as a prank."

Orina wrinkled her nose as she considered either possibility, as well as the various other ones that remained unspoken. The first might not have been so bad... and she was unsure of how she felt about the second. It still would have brought her to Elgin, but she doubted that she would have trusted him so fully had she heard the perverse jokes and lewd accusations about him first. In fact, the scenario of being presented as a gift to the town pariah was so incredibly insulting that she realized she would have hated him just on principle. "At least we still would've met?"

"It would've been terrible, though," Elgin sighed. "I'd still be apologizing, all these days later. You'd think I was a parrot."

"And I would have locked you out of the house somehow, I'm sure," Orina said. "Lucky for you, the password would've been 'I'm sorry!'"

"Liar. You would have set fire to me," Elgin countered teasingly.

"Shh." Orina smirked, then tapped him on the beak. "That's for me to know and for you to worry about on sleepless nights."

Elgin laughed. "Speaking of that, I really should get to grading papers. Usually I take care of those after you've gone to bed, but I don't think I'll be staying up too late tonight."

"Yeah, we both had an early start. When did you use to grade papers?"

"Either right after I got home from work, or right after dinner depending on how I felt. Sometimes I'd put off the older class's until the morning if they'd been particularly awful, but I'd regret it every time. So, now, I've switched it to before I go to bed. I still regret it, but it's not your fault," Elgin added, before Orina could say anything. "Don't tell my students, but I've been neglecting my schoolwork to hang out with my friend."

Orina smiled at him. "I guess I should go take a bath and stop being such a bad influence for now."

"Yes, please! You've been a terrible influence: not only are my papers ungraded, the dishes are unwashed and there's laundry left to do! I still need to take inventory of my shirts, too, just to see what's missing after you've been home today. Your bath would be the perfect time for me to raid the dresser, actually..."

"Thanks for everything today," Orina said quietly. "For walking me home and sitting with me and listening... just everything." She hugged him and he hugged her back, tightly. It lasted a bit too long for the voice's liking, but Orina shut out its words as best she could.

"I could say the same thing, really," Elgin said, just as softly. "I hope you're feeling better."

She nodded against his shoulder, then pulled away while he let her go. "I'm going to take my bath now. Just so you know, it'll last long enough to avoid helping with the laundry and dishes, but not so long that you get a chance to steal my shirts back. I didn't take any more yet, but I'm planning on wearing what I have."

"You forgot to mention where paper-grading fit into that timeline."

"Well... if you put that off to do the other things first -- heist included -- I'm going to put some serious consideration into just how soft and warm and comfortable I thought that shirt you were wearing this morning looked."

"You wouldn't!"